Bazaar, a B2B marketplace from Pakistan, has raised $70million in a Series B round led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global Management, according to a press release issued by the company.

The latest funding comes only six months after the company announced a $30m Series A in August 2021, bringing the total funding secured to date to $107.8m across four rounds since February 2020.

Investors, including Indus Valley Capital, Defy.vc, Acrew Capital, Wavemaker Partners, B&Y Venture Partners and Zayn Capital also participated in the latest deal.

Founded in June 2020 by Hamza Jawaid and Saad Jangda, Bazaar provides procurement, fulfillment, operating software, digital lending and supply chain products to merchants and suppliers in Pakistan.

“We are humbled and excited to continue on the path to creating a generation-defining story for Pakistan. With significant backing of two of the largest venture growth funds in the world, we believe this will continue to change the narrative on the country and inspire countless more and bigger stories in near future," say founders of the platform.

According to a statement, Bazaar’s mission is to build an operating system for traditional retail in Pakistan. "This retail economy, worth over $170bn, is primarily offline and mostly served through five million SMEs across the country."

The statement added that the merchant base, the lifeline of Pakistan’s economy, also lacked access to formal financial services in a country that hosts the world’s third-largest unbanked population.

"At the same time, Pakistan is undergoing a massive digital penetration wave driven by the widespread availability of affordable smartphones and some of the lowest mobile broadband costs in the world," the company says.

Bazaar says it aims to "capitalise on these fundamentals by building an integrated platform of B2B offerings that can aggregate, digitise, and finance the country’s fragmented retail landscape".

“We are thrilled to support Bazaar’s vision of building an end-to-end commerce and fintech platform for millions of unbanked and offline merchants in Pakistan”, said Christian Jensen, Partner at Dragoneer Investment Group.

“Bazaar’s pace of geographic expansion and new product development is a testament to the rare talent and culture Hamza and Saad have cultivated at Bazaar.”

Bazaar’s B2B e-commerce marketplace is now servicing 21 towns and cities across Pakistan, covering 30 per cent of Pakistan’s population through more than a dozen functional fulfillment facilities.

The platform is adding three to four new cities and towns to its last-mile network every month, putting it on course to establish the country's largest tech-enabled footprint by the end of the year, the statement says.

The statement said the mobile application had on-boarded over 2.4m businesses across 500 cities and towns in the country, recording over $10bn in annualised bookkeeping transaction value.

The company said it also recently launched Bazaar Credit, a short-term working capital financing product, which provided liquidity to its largely unbanked merchant base.

“To date, Bazaar has provided thousands of digital loans, with 100pc repayment and significant uplift in merchant buying volumes.”

John Curtius, partner at Tiger Global Management said: “We believe that Pakistan is at an inflection point in its tech ecosystem development. We are excited to back their incredible team and phenomenal growth in such a short span of time."